Barcodes are a commonplace mechanism for encoding short pieces of data in a machine-readable format. They are ubiquitous in consumer packaging in the well-known UPC format, which is a linear or 1-dimensional (1D) barcode. Newer 2-dimensional (2D) formats, such as Quick Response (QR) codes or Datamatrix codes, are gaining widespread acceptance. Many camera-equipped mobile phones are now capable of scanning a printed 2D code to extract encoded data, for example a uniform resource locator (URL). The mobile phone may be configured to launch a browser and attempt to access the URL once it has scanned and decoded such a barcode. In this manner, newspapers, advertisers and other print media are able to quickly link readers to an on-line version or the printed media or to a related website.
A problem that exists with barcodes is that they have a limited capacity. Attempts to put too much information into a barcode may lead to an excessively large barcode, which a mobile phone camera may lack the resolution to capture and decode properly. Moreover, an excessively large barcode may occupy too much space in printed media, thereby reducing the space available for paid advertising or other content.
It would be advantageous to provide for systems and methods of increasing the capacity of barcodes to store information and data. It would further be advantageous to provide for systems and methods that exploit non-print media for use of barcodes.